This past April was Illini Esports’ first Invitational! I got the chance to interview our Director of Operations, Lis “Sladex”, our President AJ “SyncShips” Taylor, and our Event Logistics Director, Chosokabe. Read further on to see what our first invitational involved and how it came to be.
For someone who may not know what an invitational is, how would you define it in your own words? How is this different from a tournament?
Chosokabe: An invitational, to me, is a style of tournament where you invite teams instead of having them qualify through some other process; it made sense to call the event where we were asking other schools to join the “Invitational” as opposed to a tournament.
SyncShips: It is a tournament with multiple schools that are invited to play. We try to have a higher quality of competition for this invite, rather than anyone to join!
Sladex: It is a gathering of universities to compete against each other, in our case, it was digitally for League of Legends and Overwatch.
How did this spark an idea to start one with Illini Esports?
Chosokabe: Part of the idea came with the dissolution of TESPA leaving; what our president felt to be a void in the collegiate esports scene. He wanted to fill that void with something of Illini Esports’ own making, and preferably create something that we could use in future semesters to increase our club’s visibility in the collegiate esports scene than a participant in others’ events. We also looked at the idea of a sports conference in traditional collegiate sports and hoped to create a system where we could form stronger bonds with specific colleges in order to create attendees that would be at all future events, to give us a larger sense of stability.
SyncShips: Personally, I saw a lot of other schools/orgs doing similar events and I wanted to do it too. So I worked with our team, asked around, and got what we could
What was your role in the process?
Chosokabe: As the director of event logistics, I was in charge of most of the macro-level decisions like how to set up the structure of the tournament and getting other Illini Esports admin members to work on it together. I hosted weekly meetings and set objectives, crafted the schedule of the event and its dates, created teams of people and gave them tasks to accomplish, acted as the connection between our organization and potential/confirmed participants, and oversaw the event while it was going on, spending about 30 hours in the Innovation Studio over 3 days.
SyncShips: I mainly helped facilitate everything from start to finish and acquired sponsors for the event!
Sladex: I was operations, so I got to work on many aspects of this event. It ranged from making sure we are meeting sponsors’ needs, graphic assets are ready for socials and broadcasting, to getting the social media team ready to post throughout the event.
How long have you been planning this event?
Chosokabe: We started planning the event in December of 2020; we had the dates and entry fees finalized in February of 2021 and eventually started inviting teams in early March.
How many people were involved?
Chosokabe: All in all, at least 24 members of Illini Esports’ administration were involved; we had three teams compete in the tournament, requiring 17 members at a minimum. 20 schools participated, including us, and over 120 students were part of a team. The discord server that we set up ended up having over 300 members, and we’re very proud of how far this tournament reached.
SyncShips: We had people from our GFX Team, Operations Team, our OW/LoL Community Coordinators, Event Logistics team, Broadcasting, and Social Media! Overall, there were around 20 people that helped in various ways!
How was planning an invitational different from other events that Illini Esports have done in the past?
SyncShips: Other events only involved us and no other college/team, so having to get a response from our colleges/teams was the hardest part! It was also our first more professionally broadcasted event too!
Sladex: I have worked in esports events revolving around panels before but not a strictly competitive event, so it was so interesting to see our invitational from start to finish. The major difference I noticed is the amount of information to keep track of in a competitive event is heavier. From player names/ IGNS for broadcasting to event bracketing, it pushed everyone’s organizational skills.
How was the turnout? Was it what you were expecting?
Sladex: The turnout was amazing. Seeing all the schools from across the U.S. sign up and then all the viewers on Twitch…it felt so accomplishing. To be honest, I was expecting our turnout to really only be competitive players, but once we integrated community events, not just players but also members from across these schools joined…. I was astonished. Everyone involved did a fantastic job putting this together!
Who were the event sponsors?
Sladex: Event Sponsors were CITL Innovation Spaces, HyperX, MSI, Uconnect Esports, Evil Geniuses, Hamul, and Team Liquid.
What is one thing you can say went well?
Chosokabe: I think our broadcasters and the production team, in general, were the highlight of the event; we received many compliments on how good our broadcasts looked and felt. This was done by a team of volunteers, and they couldn’t have done a better job. I was also very happy with the League of Legends tournament’s levels of competition between the schools; most of the games were extremely close and provided some incredible moments that I won’t soon forget.
SyncShips: I think our entire “packaged” broadcast went well! It culminates the GFX, the sponsors, the social media, everything!! We did a GREAT job for our first time!
Sladex: The broadcasting! It looked so polished!
What is one thing that you think can be improved on for future invitationals?
Chosokabe: There are many mistakes we made during the planning of the event, as we had never hosted anything for other colleges before; despite all of the troubles with reaching out to the other schools and getting them to participate, however, I was the most disappointed at how we handled communication with our own teams participating. They were forced to scramble as we didn’t let them know soon enough to have our usual rosters clear out their schedules for the event, and this is something that we can and will fix for the next Illini Esports Invitational.
SyncShips: I would 100% get things set up or sent out earlier. We were really cutting the wire for some things, haha.
Sladex: Information management for sure! As we got closer to our event so much info popped up and it was tricky to stay organized.
A big thank you again for Sladex, SyncShips, and Chosokabe for taking the time to answer my questions! Also, a big shout out and thank you to everyone else that was involved in getting things set up as this was not an easy process, but a fun one! Stay tuned as Illini Esports will only keep evolving.
Want to follow our social medias?
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And Sladex on Twitter @IEsladex